Andrew Johnson

The night Abraham Lincoln was shot, April 14, 1865, the assassins plan had three points.  It was meant to unfold like a play, each act necessary.  Booth at Ford’s Theatre.  Powell at Seward’s bedside.  And George Atzerodt at the Kirkwood House, where the Vice President was staying: Andrew Johnson.

Atzerodt arrived early.  He rented a room.  He ordered drinks.  He placed a revolver in his pocket and a Bowie knife in his coat.  He asked the bartender what time Johnson usually returned.  He watched the door.  He followed Johnson once across the lobby, close enough to smell the starch in his collar.  Close enough to do it.

Then he did not.

He sat.  He drank.  He paced.  He drank again.  The staircase remained.  The door remained.  History waited.  He did not move.

While Lincoln was carried across the street, while Seward fought for breath under the weight of a blade, Atzerodt wandered the dark streets with the gun still loaded and the knife still warm against his ribs.  When he was caught days later, the receipt from the Kirkwood was in his pocket.  He told them everything.

So the presidency of Andrew Johnson begins here, at the bottom of a staircase, because a frightened man lost his nerve.

Not by design.

By accident.

By weakness.

Which is a way many things begin.

Andrew Johnson

ANDREW JOHNSON

Ash-born from Tennessee’s red clay,

No schooling but the night’s slow flame,

Dressed first in thread, in law, in say,

Raised by a wife who taught his name.

Eager for Union, stern in war,

When cannon wrote the nation’s core.

Jackson’s heir in tempered tone,

Opposing wealth and planter pride,

Holding the Constitution alone,

Not seeing who stood at his side.

Signing mercy the South would wield,

Opening gates the war had sealed,

Naming it peace, and calling it healed.

By: Greg McNeilly